There is some debate about the best way to ensure that students put appropriate things onto blogs.
The two suggested mechanisms seem to be:
Pre Moderation - where the tutor in charge holds all posts and comments for moderation and lets through those that are deemed appropriate. Essentially a system of censorship.
Post Moderation - here the students are allowed to publish or comment on a blog and any issues are taken up in open debate by the tutor and the students.
Comments
It seems to me that pre-moderation is a method which is doomed to failure. One of the major reasons that students use a blog is that they have some control over when and what they write. Pre-moderation takes this away and is likely to result in a severe reduction in the use of the blog. Simolarly with comments; if you have to wait for the moderator to OK the comment you are much less likely to bother commenting. As the purpose setting up a blog is to get the students to use it and thus enhance their learning, pre-moderation is a hinderance to that goal.
Post-moderation has further advantages:
- it can be used as a learning opportunity whereas simply not allowing certain posts does not help learning, rather it hinders it.
- it helps to develop the student autonomy as the students themselves must make a decision as to whether a post is appropriate to publish rather than always relying on the decision of the tutor.